AN AMBASSADOR for Liverpool has narrowly escaped prison for a vicious unprovoked street attack.

Jonathon O’Connor, 27, has acted as a representative for the city during foreign visits, but Judge David Aubrey, QC, told him: “Certainly, on this particular night, you were not acting as an ambassador for this city.”

Liverpool Crown Court heard that, after a day of drinking, the university-educated graphic designer and two friends launched a savage attack on two innocent brothers.

While one of O’Connor’s accomplices has never been traced, the other was a respected young businessman who was running the family garage. Gareth Hughes, 29, had gone for a night out with O’Connor after discovering his father, David, had terminal cancer.

Ben Morris, defending, told the court Hughes’s father had urged his son to go out on September 24 last year to take his mind off his deadly illness.

But instead the night turned to violence.

Brothers Simon and Stuart Doran were on the city’s Hanover Street, trying to hail a taxi, when they were set upon.

Helen Morris, prosecuting, told how Stuart Doran remembered being punched and falling to the ground.

Both brothers only then remember coming round in the ambulance.

They had been repeatedly kicked and punched and suffered severe swelling and bruising to their eyes and faces, chipped and cracked teeth and cuts.

But the attack was captured on City Watch cameras and played to Judge Aubrey yesterday.

He told the pair: “Anybody who has examined the footage of this incident could only have been appalled by the acts of violence perpetrated upon two innocent young men.”